NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The information in this document was accurate as of the original publication date.

Audience: Educators
Grades: 5-8


Although planets, stars and other celestial bodies move through space in complicated ways, space is so vast that rarely do such bodies collide. However, when someone watches these movements from a distant vantage point, it sometimes looks as though collisions occur because of the perspective. The introduction of Transit Math clearly explains the apparent "collisions," eclipses, transits and occultations to middle school students. The variety of concepts in this 44-problem collection includes synodic periods, planetary conjunctions, geometry, fractions, linear equations and probability. The problems are authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data. Each word problem includes background information. The one-page assignments are accompanied by one-page teachers answer keys.

Transit Math  [14MB PDF file]

More booklets in this series:
Space Math I
Space Math II
Space Math III
Space Math IV
Space Math V
Space Math VI
Space Math VII
Astrobiology Math
Black Hole Math
Earth Math
Electromagnetic Math
Image Scale Math
Lunar Math
Magnetic Math
Radiation Math
Remote Sensing Math
Solar Math
Space Weather Math